On the occasion of the screening of Sisterhood, Share and Authority by Marit Östberg and Camp Beaverton: Meet the Beavers by Ana Grillo and Beth Nelsen, the IWFF Dortmund | Cologne invites you to join us in the discussion about the representation of explicit sex on the screen.
For many years we heard opinions addressing pornography as a negative territory for women sexuality where they are subordinate into patriarchal structures that show them in a passive, submissive, objectified roles. According to Johanna Schorn »While it is undeniably true that we live in a heteronormative patriarchal society that mandates certain ways of sexual expressions and does not generally place much of a focus on consent or equality, it should also be possible for individuals to experience their sexuality and pleasure in the way that feels most intuitive to them. For sex-positive feminists, the solution is not to restrict or outright ban certain practices, but to work together collectively to ensure that they can be performed within a ›safe‹, ›healthy‹ and non-exploitative context.«
And that context happens when people like Manuela Kay program and co-organize the International Porn Film Festival in Berlin or when sex-positive queer-feminists like Marit Östberg decide to shoot porn films expressing that »When queers and women take their sexuality into their own hands patriarchy is lost«.
We have the pleasure to count on the presence of this three women that will present artistic, social, political, theoretical, practical and experiential ideas about Queer Feminist Porn and Sex positive to open an exchange of thoughts with the audience.
Manuela Kay
Manuela Kay, born and raised in West Berlin, has been an active member of the lesbian and gay scene since 1979. She is a journalist and joint director of Special Media SDL Verlag publishers, co-editor of the magazines Siegessäule – Queer in Berlin, and editor-in-chief and co-editor of the lesbian magazine L-MAG, Das Magazin für Lesben. She has published several books, including Schöner Kommen (Querverlag, 2000), made sex-positive films such as Airport (1994) and has been co-organizer and curator of the Pornfilmfestival Berlin since 2007. She also translated the book The L Word – Willkommen in unserer Welt (The L Word – Welcome to Our World) by Kera Bolonik, published by Querverlag in 2006, and created the L-MAG specialist magazine L-MAG Deluxe around the series The L Word.
Marit Östberg
Marit Östberg is a filmmaker. She has a background as queer feminist activist and journalist and has become a part of the queer feminist porn scene that has evolved in Europe in recent years, making films that pushes ideas of who and what porn might be for. Her films have been shown and discussed at various festivals around the world. Marit Östberg is also the critically acclaimed director of two of The Knife’s most recent videos.
Johanna Schorn
Johanna Schorn is PhD-student and research assistant at the University of Cologne, working in the English department. She teaches undergraduate classes with a focus on Gender Studies and Queer Theory. She is an assistant editor for the department’s online journal Gender Forum where her article Subverting Pornormativity: Feminist and Queer Interventions has also appeared. Additionally, she is completing her dissertation with the title Lost in Transition: Constructions of Transgender Identites in Queer Media. She is a Volunteer Sex Educator on Scarleteen.com offering information for young adults around sex and sexuality.
